The January sales around European football resemble the sceneinside a high-rolling casino, but with human chips, instead of plastic ones,thrown at the spinning wheel.
Two weeks go by. The big gamblers eye one another withoutmaking their big play. Then desperation spurs one club to go for broke.
On Monday night, the London club Queens Park Rangers, ownedby a Malaysian airline entrepreneur and with input from one of India’s richestfamilies, was in negotiations with at least four players.
The Rangers’ new team manager, that old wheeler-dealer HarryRedknapp, was flying the Channel between England and France. On Sunday, he wasbidding to buy the powerful Rennes midfield man, Yann M’Vila. On Monday,Rangers was hijacking what was thought to have been a done deal between Olympiquede Marseille and Newcastle United for the striker Loic Remy.
By Tuesday, he was in the English Midlands, where Q.P.R. hadan F.A. Cup replay against West Bromwich Albion and where Redknapp was hopingto persuade two from West Brom - winger Peter Odemwingie and the toweringdefender Jonas Olsson “ to switch teams.
A few days before all of this, Redknapp was blandly denyingthat he had any irons in the fire. ''We’ve tried a few things, but I don’t knowwhat’s happening in the market,'' he said. ''That’s down to the chiefexecutive.''
And that’s Harry. The 65-year-old East Londoner comes tolife in the January market. He is known as Houdini Harry for his expertise atguiding teams as they save themselves in relegation dogfights, but to do that,he first has to persuade club owners to speculate and spend on the players hefeels can ''do the business.'' It is hair-raising stuff. Tony Fernandes, theMalaysian business high flier who is Rangers’ chief shareholder, fired theteam’s coach, Mark Hughes, to give his job to Redknapp a month beforeChristmas.
The team, already expensive, was scraping along at thebottom of the Premier League. It still is, but a victory at Chelsea and a drawlast Saturday against Redknapp’s former team, Tottenham Hotspur, gave a glimmerof hope that the forlorn bunch of misfits at Q.P.R. were responding to the newmanager’s motivation.
But how does it do it? The bulk of Redknapp’s talking aroundplayers is to tell them he sees greatness in their shoes. They have it in them,if only they would work at it, to be world beaters, never mind just survivorsin the big league.
Whether he believes it does not matter; what matters is thatthey do.
Meantime, he persuades the owners “ Fernandes and the familyof Lakshmi Mittal “ that the talent on their payroll is simply not good enough.They must throw more chips, millions more, at the wheel or they are lost.
And it’s a gamble worth making, because last summer theEnglish Premier League hugely increased its income when new television dealswere signed. For the three seasons starting this coming September, after a newtelevisions partner, BT, chipped in 738 million pounds, or $1.19 billion, andSky and ESPN increased their existing contracts, there will be more than doublethe money on the table for the 20 teams that share out the Premiership pool.
The deals now are worth a combined package in excess of 3billion pounds. The pot keeps rising, in spite of economic conditions.
England has the game the world wants to watch on television,and staying in that league of 20 is the difference between high finance andpotential ruin.
The owners know it. The players know it. The agents who movethose players around flock to it like bees to nectar. And of course, clubs inother leagues, lesser leagues in financial terms, succumb to it.
